Research: Air bubbles trapped in 2.7-billion-year old rocks suggest that earth's air

Since inception, life has been transforming on planet earth. Scientists have come up with startling facts about early earth. Air bubbles trapped in 2.7-billion-year old rocks suggest that earth's air weighed less than half of today's atmosphere. In the distant past, the blue planet had a much thicker atmosphere.

This comes based on the observation that earth had liquid oceans as early as four billion years ago, when the sun was only 70 percent as luminous as it is today. But the ancient earth was also subjected to many abrupt changes in climate and atmospheric chemistry. (Also read. Researchers create new light-emitting cement that has a life of 100 years)

Researchers from the University of Washington have now reversed the commonly accepted idea that the early Earth had a thicker atmosphere to compensate for weaker sunlight. The findings also focus on which gases were then found in the atmosphere. For this researchers used bubbles trapped in cooling lava as a ‘paleobarometer’ to determine the weight of air in our earth's youth.

Our blue planet 2.7 billion years ago was home only to single-celled microbes, sunlight was about one-fifth weaker, and the atmosphere contained no oxygen. The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience and also a researcher of Indian origin. (Also read. Researchers discover first case of Zika virus linked to paralysis)